Principal Asset Management has sold a data center in Georgia.

The investment firm this week announced the sale of a 15.2MW, 185,000 sq ft (17,185 sqm) single-story data center in Alpharetta, Fulton County.

The buyer and terms of the deal weren’t shared. BisNow, however, reports GI Partners paid $253 million to Lincoln Rackhouse and Principal Asset Management for the property, according to documents filed with the Georgia Superior Court Clerks' Cooperative Authority database. The companies declined to comment to the publication.

A US-focused data center fund managed by Principal acquired the asset in August 2022 in a joint venture with Lincoln Rackhouse (now Lincoln Property Company) for around $63m from Towerbrook Capital Partners. The property is now let to two unnamed tenants, including a Fortune 100 financial services business and a high-performance computing company.

The data center, located on 39 acres at 4905 North Point Parkway, was originally built for a telecommunications technology company in 2009, with an initial design enabling a power capacity of 4MW. Following the expansion to 15MW, Principal says the site offers the possibility of further expansion on land adjacent to the existing building.

Devin Chen, head of private equity real estate portfolio management at Principal Asset Management, said: “Our data-driven approach to asset selection and value enhancement capabilities allow us to capitalize on markets with significant potential growth, and the data center in Alpharetta is a prime example of this. We substantially increased the site’s power capacity, further meeting the demand of today’s tenants. Principal continues to see strong opportunities across the data center market and remains committed to investing in high-quality, strategically located assets.”

The site was previously leased to Ascent (now Wesco), which bought the 'Alpharetta Tier 3' data center from BlackBerry in 2017 for $30m and had been trying to sell it since 2018.

Principal Asset Management is the global investment solutions business for Principal Financial Group, managing $579.8 billion in assets, including $102.2bn in real estate assets.